


So Close

by Bruteaous



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bruteaous/pseuds/Bruteaous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4x13. Root and the Machine have a conversation. Set after the Machine asked Root to stop looking for Shaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Close

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you guys but I needed a little something something to pick me up off of the floor after the last episode. Hence, this. You are welcome. Enjoy. :)

Root leaned back into the shadows of the abandoned building on the lower East Side where she was determined to spend the night.

 

According to the machine, her current alias did have an apartment somewhere in Queens, but after being told in not so many words to give up the hunt for Sameen Shaw, Root would rather sleep in an unheated building infested with vermin than take a hand out from the god who’d betrayed her.

 

_You would be more comfortable in the apartment._

The replies came more frequently now than they had in days or months really, but Root wasn’t at all as overjoyed as she might have felt before the shit hit the fan at the NYSE. In 75 hours, her mind, body, and soul had run a marathon of more emotional laps than Samantha Groves had experienced in her entire lifetime. Now, without the adrenaline, she just felt hollow, exhausted, and lost.

 

She didn’t even have the emotional energy to cry. Crying had never been commonplace for her anyway. Root had always much preferred to ride the wave of her more destructive emotions and let them carry her through whatever storm she found herself in leaving a creepy mosaic of battered bodies in her wake.

 

However, the desperation fueled anger that had been propelling her forward like a feral wind since the elevator had let them out into the empty parking garage of the NYSE had finally evaporated and left her listless.

 

 _Harold and John need you_. _They need us,_ the voice that was uniquely Her tried again.

 

Root huffed and wrapped her arms more tightly around her middle, listening to the faint scrabbling squeaks of rodents from the floor above her. There were goosebumps on her arms beneath the thin leather of her jacket and she could see her breath as it condensed into a quick steam in the flickering glow of the streetlamps that shone in through the crookedly boarded windows.

 

Squatting in a cold condemned building in New York in winter had been a bad idea.

 

Root had known that from the moment she saw the ancient storefront, jaded and out of place against the gentrified businesses and apartment complexes trying to look so different from what they really were, but something about the place had called to her. Maybe it was because it stuck out like a drop of blood on a white tablecloth and because of that it was somehow alone, desolate with no one and nothing to look forward to, just like her.

 

 _Great, now I’m emphasizing with four walls and a roof like it’s an actual person. If only Sameen could see me now_ , Root thought.  

 

Root was surprised at the sudden sharp ache that bloomed from her chest outward like a fresh wound. And to think, she’d thought she couldn’t feel anymore.

 

She tried to chuckle at the ironic familiarity of it all, but the sound came out as a choked sob wrapped in a painful gasp of air.

 

_Go to the subway station. There is a bed there you can sleep on._

“Not a chance,” Root spat out, trying not to think about the fact that the bed the Machine was referencing had been brought to the station for Shaw during her brief bout of captivity.

The brunette stiffened at the memory and hunched over her knees, hoping unreasonably that part of the heat rising off of her body would stay and warm her numbing limbs a little longer. After twenty minutes of this, Root stood and began pacing back and forth along the wall. She could feel her whole body beginning to shiver. Soon if she didn’t do something her teeth would start to chatter and her muscles would begin to feel heavy and eventually they would stop listening to her altogether.

 

There wasn’t much more of this she could take. Even so, Root stopped in her tracks and stared up at the ceiling.

 

“Why? Why won’t you tell me if she’s alive?! That’s all I want from you. Please,” she pleaded desperately, crossing her arms over her chest and rubbing warmth back into them with her hands.

 

Silence was her reply.

 

Root waited. She could be patient when she had to be, but that patience had its limits and the strain of the last few days had pushed her past every limit she had.

 

“Answer me!” She wailed, picking up a large splinter of wood from the debris on the floor and throwing it at the ceiling like her god could somehow feel it.

 

The unrelenting silence continued.

 

Root began to pace again, her breathing picking up as her teeth began to chatter together.

 

“You are my friend, my boss, my reason for being,” Root said, filling the quiet with the lonely sound of her own fractured voice, “but she is the woman I love. There’s no contest. If the choice is her or you, I choose her.”  

 

This time the response was immediate.

 

_My maker taught me that no one life is worth more than anyone else._

“Your maker doesn’t live by the rules he taught you.” Root growled, squinting determinedly up at a ceiling she knew didn’t have a camera, “no human does. If this had been Grace, Harold would be the one down on his knees begging for your help right now. You know I’m right. He wouldn’t rest until he found her. I deserve the same courtesy, the same chance however ill advised.”

 

The hacker waited but again there was no answer.

 

Another sob escaped through Root’s shaking lips and she slid down the wall to sit back on the floor.

 

She felt the corners of her eyes stinging in that meaningful way she’d managed to ignore since they’d returned to the subway station from the Exchange. She’d broken down on the stairs. She hadn’t even made it down onto the platform before the dam broke and everything came flooding out in a ruthless undercurrent she couldn’t stop.

 

A renewed burn rose in her chest as the memories came rushing back: Lionel basically carrying John over to the cot, Finch letting go of her arm to scramble for the first aid kit, their overbearing pitying looks as the promise of a future with Sameen—a future she had wanted, a future she hadn’t thought she deserved, a future she wasn’t even sure Sameen would have ever been willing to give her—shattered as reality came crushing down on them all from above.

 

Never had Root wanted something or someone so much, had it dangled in front of her face as if it was hers to have, and then had it ripped from her so violently in the same instant.

 

Even when she had been duped by Harold when she was looking for the Machine, she’d never felt this sort of anguish. It was all consuming and unrelenting.

 

_If you go after her alone you will not survive._

 

“I don’t want to exist in a world where she isn’t,” Root said, letting the tears finally fall down her cheeks. “Please…please…just tell me.”

 

The world in Root’s head was suddenly quiet again.

 

There were still all of the usual sounds: the harsh rasp of her breathing echoing off the concrete walls, the honking of horns, and the consistent rumble of traffic outside. Amidst all the ordinary acoustics of living, Root keenly felt her aloneness. The last time she remembered feeling this adrift was after Hannah had disappeared and no one had believed the terrible truths she’d told them about Mr. Russell and it had finally become just her against the world…

 

She was so lost in her own thoughts that Root almost didn’t catch the whisper of a voice through her cochlear implant that suddenly made it okay to breathe and hope again.

 

 _Asset Sameen Shaw is alive._  


End file.
